The reviews are in: Skin Deep is funny, has toilets
I have a big thank you for every single reviewer who was willing to spend time with our slapstick bullshit. I'm feeling very grateful that everyone seems to have received our work in the way that we hoped it would be received: extremely silly, lighthearted, chaotic fun. You can wishlist Skin Deep here. If you're looking for our Discord, you can find it here.
Eurogamer
Skin Deep, though, is a perfect genre piece. It's immersive and it simulates. It's hard enough to be a challenge, but it's broad enough and rich enough for every challenge to become a chance for you to really enjoy yourself. Like the planets you strobe through in one of its ingenious cut-scenes - man, I want to spoil that one here, I have so much to say about it - it exists in a kind of goldilocks zone. All the elements are just right.
PC Gamer
It would have been in line with genre tradition to give players a gun from the jump, and I suspect easier to design open-ended levels around, but Blendo's characteristic distaste for the usual is Skin Deep's secret sauce.
The Verge
Having to pick glass out of your feet might make it sound like Skin Deep is interested in realism. It’s not. What Chung and a small cohort of developers at Blendo hone in on are the possibilities afforded by a play space that is aiming for, even more than big-budget immersive sims like the Dishonored, a frankly preposterous level of physical and systemic coherence. They’re doing so using a video game engine, Id Tech 4 — famously used for Doom 3 — which is now more than 20 years old. The pleasure comes in testing the pliability of the design, the extent to which the game is able to account for harebrained schemes and foolhardy mistakes.
Rock Paper Shotgun
Doors open to reveal unexpected chuckles. Item labels are written with the succinct humour of a marketing copywriter who wants to be fired. I didn't think I could love a Blendo cat more than the silent arms dealer who sells you all manner of gadgets in Quadrilateral Cowboy, but there's a high-and-mighty mobster feline in this game called Little Lion who I would pledge allegience to in a jot. You are introduced to him in a 5-minute sequence that contains more laughs than the entirety of other comedy games.